Alone in lowly friendship
With the green grass and the sky.
He murmured ancient music
His red heart burned to sing
Because his perfect conquest
Had grown a weary thing.

No chant of gilded triumph --
His lonely song was made
Of Art's deliberate freedom;
Of minor chords arrayed
In soft and shadowy colors
That once were radiant flowers: --
The Rose of Sharon, bleeding
In Olive-shadowed bowers: --

And all the other roses
In the songs of East and West
Of love and war and worshipping,
And every shield and crest
Of thistle or of lotus
Or sacred lily wrought
In creeds and psalms and palaces
And temples of white thought: --

# To be read very softly, yet in spirited response. #
All these he sang, half-smiling
And weeping as he smiled,
Laughing, talking to his harp
As to a new-born child: --